Welfare State and Civil Society: Must We Choose?

Barack Obama’s
Roanoke speech is most famous for his “if you’ve got
a business, you didn’t build that, somebody else made that happen” remark, but,
as
Yuval Levin astutely mentioned at the
time, it was not the most interesting or sinister part of the president’s
speech. What was worst was how President Obama described what “we do better
together.” Everything President Obama mentioned as being done “together” was
action by the government. Levin argued that Obama “sees the citizen and the
state, and nothing in betweenand thus sees every political question as a
choice between radical individualism and a federal program.”

There
is much to be said for Levin’s analysis, but President Obama (who is famously a
former community organizer) is willing to make use of organizations between the
individual and the state. The catch is that those non-state organizations had
better serve the goals and sensibilities of the Obama administrationor else
watch out. The Obama administration’s conflict with the Little Sisters of the
Poor indicate that President Obama sees those institutions between the
individual and the state as either lackeys that provide his political coalition
with money and volunteers or as targets who must either be suborned or
destroyed.
Labor
unions that are allied
to the president get waivers from Obamacare fees. Green
energy companies
get subsidies. The Little Sisters get to choose between
either violating their consciences or closing down their services to the poor
and the dying. This approach mixes hardball politics with corporatist policy. Non-state
actors can either get on board with the priorities of “we do better together”
as defined by the left and get favorable treatment, or hold on to their own
principles and face harassment.

President
Obama’s narrow and hyper-politicized understanding of human relationships would
be a fatal weakness if his opponents did not so often seem to agree with Obama’s
rhetoric and its false choice between radical individualism and statism. Too
often Republicans have talked as though they believe our choices are between
radical individualism and a comprehensively stultifying welfare state.

This
impression is in some ways the creation of left-of-center rhetoric. President
Obama likes
to talk as if Social Security, Medicare, and
unemployment insurance and a myriad of other transfer programs had ceased to
exist prior to his inauguration. But it isn’t entirely a fantasy of left politics.
Some of President Obama’s opponents make it seem like they are either the
sneaking enemies or the grudging tolerators of the welfare state.

Sometimes
this seeming hostility shows up as a purely ideological objection to the
existence of the federal welfare state. Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller
likely torpedoed his chances of winning by
questioning the constitutionality of
unemployment insurance. Rick Perry injured his own presidential campaign not
only by calling Social Security a Ponzi scheme, but by engaging in half-baked
speculations about having Social Security taken over by state government.

What
is worse than these shows of seeming hostility is a sense of indifference to
the concerns that people under the median have about the structure and extent
of the welfare state. After a campaign talking about the concerns, complaints
and virtues of business owners, Mitt Romney complained about the
“gifts” that President Obama gave to women,
African-Americans, and Latinos. Implicit in Romney’s complaint was the idea
that worrying about security of health insurance was the same as wanting a gift
of “free health care.”

Romney
was no enemy of the welfare state. Romney had signed a state-level law that was
very similar to Obamacare. If Obama was into giving out free health care, then
so was Romney. What was problematic for Romney was that he allowed himself to
get sucked into a rhetoric where he seemed indifferent to the concerns of
people around the earnings median. Romney allowed himself to get suckered into
an argument where it sounded like people had to choose between Obama’s “we’re
in this together” (even if it was a corrupt and incompetent together) and
Romney’s “you’re on your own.”

The
good news is that President Obama’s opponents don’t have to adopt very much new
practice. They are already for expensive old age commitments and for expanding
catastrophic health care coverage. Republican politicians have come out for an
increased child tax credit and for wage subsidies for low-wage workers. On the
welfare state, the president’s right-of-center opponents are better than they
sound.

It
is important to tie these individual welfare state policies into something like
a coherent argument. Let the Democrats
romanticize how Obamacare will reduce
labor force participation among low-skill workers. Conservatives can point out
that the already low labor force participation rate among low-skill workers is
a
social disaster, but they can do more. Conservatives
can point to a
health care plan that will extend health
insurance coverage with fewer work disincentives than Obamacare and tax
policies that will increase the
take home pay and work incentives of
parents below the earnings median.

Henry
Olsen wrote that many swing working-class whites are ambivalent about the
government. They don’t trust the government, but also think that many people
live hard lives and need help occasionally. In practice, conservatives agree,
but what those voters heard was a conservative celebration of their bosses and
Romney’s contemptuous dismissal of the 47 percent. Many of those voters likely
stayed home in 2012. Artur Davis
argued that a similar dynamic was at work among many
African-American (and I would add Latino) voters in 2012. Republicans seemed like
the party of on your ownand if you weren’t a business owner or aspiring
business owner, you were a loser.

Irving
Kristol argued that our task was to create a “conservative welfare state.” He
was right, but that sounds a little too ideological for the average person. Better
to say a more relational and pro-work welfare state. The president’s opponents
can extend health insurance while also protecting civil society. If the Little
Sisters of the Poor want to comfort dying elderly women they should not be
forced to provide contraception coverage as a condition of performing their
acts of mercy. There is no need to force the Sisters unless one only
understands “together” as simply the state and all institutions as either the
state’s retainers or enemies.

For
those working-class voters of all races (and those who affiliate with them)
conservatives can be for a welfare state that respects those people who go to
work every day and seek to make work pay better instead of making work an
economically losing proposition and calling it “liberation.” Conservatives can
be for extending catastrophic health care coverage without attacking those
principled people who alleviate the suffering of the poor and vulnerable. Conservatives
can be for a decent and reciprocal welfare state that doesn’t throw roadblocks
up to people seeking to help themselves and their neighbor. We can be for a
welfare state where the government is only one way in which we work together. Let
the other party be for tearing down every human relationship they find inconvenient.
And let us remind everyone that, in President Obama’s world, if you find
yourself inconvenient to the party in power, you will truly find yourself on
your own.